I'd love to agree with you, and as an adult reading this text I probably deduce meaning of unknown words from the general context, although I like the safety net of my middle-english glossary. But when teaching secondary school children, especially when giving key stage 3 pupils a 'taster' or using an example of Chaucer's work as part of KAL (knowledge about language) unit of work a translation is excellent to show them how our language is living and changing.
This is an absolutely hilarious laugh-riot of a book of prose, but you MUST read it as it was originally written. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why people feel the urge to "translate" a book that is already written in English. It invariably loses all of the humour. Each verse is like a joke in rhyming couplets. The rhythm is incessant, but is necessary to create the tension which can only be released by the punchline (the last line of each verse). When the rhythm is altered, the essence of this great work is lost. Although the spelling and some of the language is unfamiliar to contemporary English speakers, it really isn't that hard to understand within the context.
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